Refactoring UI — Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger
Refactoring UI packages Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger’s book into a skill your agent loads while it styles things. It works in grayscale before color, picks from constrained spacing and type scales instead of arbitrary pixel values, and builds hierarchy with weight and contrast rather than position alone — so the UI stops looking generated.
- Visual Hierarchy
- Spacing & Sizing Systems
- Color Palette Strategy
Try
“Redesign this settings page to have clearer visual hierarchy using refactoring-ui skill”
Human Interface Guidelines — Apple
Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines run to hundreds of pages; the iOS HIG Design skill compresses the parts that change your code into something an agent can apply. It checks navigation choices, safe areas, Dynamic Type, SF Symbols, and haptics against platform convention, so a screen reads as native rather than as a web layout in a phone frame.
- Navigation Patterns
- SF Symbols & Iconography
- Dynamic Type
Try
“Design a tab-based navigation structure for my fitness app using ios-hig-design skill”
Don’t Make Me Think — Steve Krug & Jakob Nielsen
UX Heuristics folds two usability traditions into one skill: Jakob Nielsen’s ten heuristics and Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. It has your agent walk an interface the way an evaluator does — naming each violation, rating its severity from 0 to 4, and proposing the specific fix — instead of offering a general opinion on whether a screen looks usable.
- Visibility of System Status
- Recognition over Recall
- Error Prevention
Try
“Run a heuristic evaluation on my checkout flow using ux-heuristics skill”
On Web Typography — Jason Santa Maria
Typography gets decided once and then shapes every page forever, which is why Web Typography turns Jason Santa Maria’s On Web Typography into an agent skill. It sets measure, line height, and a fluid modular scale before it argues about typefaces, pairs faces with real structural contrast, and loads fonts under a budget so nothing reflows on arrival.
- Typeface Selection
- Typographic Scale
- Measure & Line Height
Try
“Select a font pairing for my SaaS marketing site using web-typography skill”
The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
Don Norman gave the field its vocabulary — affordance, signifier, mapping, feedback — and the Design of Everyday Things skill puts that vocabulary to work on software. Your agent uses it to explain why a control fails: what it invites you to do, what it signals, whether its layout matches what it affects, and what it tells you afterwards.
- Affordances
- Signifiers
- Natural Mapping
Try
“Audit this interface for missing affordances and signifiers using design-everyday-things skill”
Elite Agency Techniques — Locomotive, Studio Freight, AREA 17
Distilled from how agencies like Locomotive, Studio Freight, and AREA 17 work, Top Design is the skill for the last two points — the gap between a site that looks professional and one that gets shared. It pushes your agent toward a signature moment, a dramatic type scale, custom easing curves, and motion that never leaves transform and opacity.
- Visual Storytelling
- Scroll-Driven Animation
- Whitespace as Design
Try
“Design a hero section with cinematic scroll reveal using top-design skill”
Lean UX — Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
Lean UX moves design from deliverables to experiments, applying Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden’s book of the same name. The skill has your agent restate a feature request as a testable hypothesis — we believe this change produces that outcome, and we will know when this metric moves — then design the smallest thing that could disprove it.
- Hypothesis-Driven Design
- Outcomes over Outputs
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
Try
“Frame this feature idea as a Lean UX hypothesis with measurable outcomes using lean-ux skill”
Microinteractions — Dan Saffer
A save button that just sits there, a toggle with no in-between state, a form that fails silently — the Microinteractions skill, built on Dan Saffer’s book of that name, fixes exactly these. It applies his four-part structure — trigger, rules, feedback, loops and modes — so your agent specs the small moments deliberately instead of defaulting to a transition.
Try
“Design microinteractions for our button states, loading, and success feedback using microinteractions skill”
Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
Steve Jobs Design Review turns your agent into an unusually harsh reviewer, drawing on Walter Isaacson’s biography and the documented accounts of how Jobs ran product reviews. It judges the experience end to end, demands a kill for every addition, and returns a binary verdict — insanely great, or not done — with a cut list attached.
- Simplicity Is the Ultimate Sophistication
- Focus Means Saying No
- Design Is How It Works
Try
“Review this landing page like Steve Jobs would — verdict, cut list, fix list using steve-jobs-design-review skill”